That TOS Black Magic....

Okay, here's a story telling style/technique question for my fellow Narrators/GMs:

When I played Trek in High School and during my military service, it wasn't hard to invoke the atmosphere/mystique of the original Trek.

There was just something different- and special- about the Original series and their Movie era (ST:TMP thru ST:TUC).

Granted, this was twenty years ago and there's been a lot more Trek to take into account- but I'm missing that aura and "feel" to my games and I'm not sure how to recreate it.

Is it just my lost youth for which I am pining? Or was there indeed something more that TNG, DS9, Voy, and ENT just haven't been able to recapture?

As best I can tell, I'm not doing anything significantly different (story-wise) from those days (though I've obviously refined my techniques).

I also wonder if perhaps it's the group...

In High School I played with four-six guys for four years straight. My military group was a core of five people, with various outriders cycling through.

Is it Trek that has changed?

Or is it me?

Is it the mystery..the unknown? In TOS the galaxy is big and mysterious. Anything could happen (and often did). We had no idea where things were, how big various empires were, what technologies were possible and what were not. Then along came the later series a hundred years later. Those were highly detailed, they established in firm numbers who, where, and how many. They told us too much about the imaginary physics so now it's not so magical, just advanced technology, and we realized that some things couldn't be done because of the limits of the imaginary physics. There is also the matter of scale. In TNG+ we see a large number of other Star Fleet ships. There are fleet actions of hundreds or thousands of ships. It's all far more militaristic. TOS we only saw a few starships in 3 seasons. Battles were one-on-one -- very personal. There was only one "brink of war" episode, put to a stop by the Organians, compared to half a dozen wars in DS9 alone.

The mystery. . .the unknown. That's what it was for me. TOS we beamed down to a new planet to explore and a new civilization to encounter. Post-TOS, I don't know, it was different. Sure there was new civilizations and new planets, but you just don't get the same sense of exploration that was present in TOS. I may take slack for it but that sense of exploration was there somewhat in VOY, and thus one of the reasons I liked VOY. It had that feeling of exploration and wonder I felt the other Post-TOS shows lacked.

Interesting question... I've been reviewing a few remastered TOS episodes of late, so I'll throw in my 2 cents' worth.

I'd say it's the 'unknown' factor, or lack thereof. Consider episodes like The Tholian Web or The Doomsday Machine. When Loskene's "face" appears on the viewscreen, the crew's reaction -- barring Spock, of course -- is 'what the **** is that?!":eek: Or wandering the eerie, empty corridors of the USS Constellation... no bodies, no blood, just a deserted shell. Kirk and company at a loss to understand what's happened.

In the 'modern' shows, it'd all be airily covered with lines like "Trinomicron field traces... indicating a subnucleonic power source, Captain!" Whatever any of that means.:rolleyes:

So, for me, it's the 'edge of the unknown' feel. The 24th century is just too well-defined, well-populated, and far too full of starships for the same effect.

A secondary issue for me is that the 24th century Starfleet characters are too well-adjusted to be really engaging. Kirk, McCoy and their contemporaries are human -- they have flaws, they have failings, but they struggle to overcome them. Whereas Picard smugly dismisses Q with some 'perfected humanist' line... and that sets off the premature first contact with the Borg. Oops...

Its the shows.I too have gone back to a TOS(actually Pre-TOS) time peroid for my latest games.2250 was the start date for my 1st new game & were up to 2251 now.The Connies were new,April was the Enterprise Captain till late 2250/early 2251,Klingons were the Human looking type with a few "imperial" style klingons.TThey started out on a small vessel the USS Thatcher (My Redoue of the Mission Class)& now are on a Travers Class Explorer.W/a crew of 20(Thatcher had crew of 14) enought to have some "red shrits" & not kill off the main characters(Unless the do dumb shit,like the phaser fight on the bridge;I was being real nice that game ;) )

There is also a very different story telling style at work in TOS and it is centered around the idea of body, mind and soul.

Kirk is the body.

Spock is the mind.

McCoy is the soul.

As a trio the body relies on both to guide him, but he, as the body, makes actions.

What really makes it magical are the episodes where they mix it up and McCoy acts more like the mind and Spock more like the soul.

With 3 MAIN characters you get an economy of story telling that really is exciting, aka no Beverly or Geordi episodes... ::shudder::

One of the reasons, as a side note, that I love DS9 is that they were able to tell a story with more than 7 characters and still make it interesting and engaging, which is a tribute to the season 3+ writers on DS9. Well, if you don't count the ending, which I wasn't a fan of.

So yeah, along with all the talk of mystery and wonder, streamlined characterization.

I ran a campaign once with just 3 players and made sure their characters fill the B/M/S dynamic and we had a wicked good time!

I think I've succeeded in caputing the TOS "feel" in my 24th century campaigns. I have three players who've been with me for nearly 25 years. Commander M'Rel would correspond to "body", Lt. Commander Tal to the "mind", and Lt Commander Seth to the "soul" (being a religious Bajoran type).

I started them out in the Dyson Sphere, cut off from Starfleet as a whole, and let them develope their individuality. They frequently take matters into their own hands and be damned to Starfleet Regulations (within self-imposed limits).

I think part of it is the fact that, in TOS, technology was often the problem. The crew succeeded despite technology, often having to overcome something gone awry to win the day.

TOS was also about exploring on the edge. There was always something new, undiscovered over the horizon, where Starfleet didn't get an answer back on how to proceed until the episode was over (if they could contact Starfleet Command at all).

In TNG, every episode seemed to have a technobabble solution to every problem, followed by moralizing how the Federation/crew was better than the bumpy-head-of-the-week. TNG Trek was "established." It was the late-20th Century Navy, with the rigid following of procedures and established precedent (where Kirk & co. sometimes had to make it up as they went along...even in GO1 situations).